Financial Goals for 2009
By Matt - Monday, January 5th, 2009
Since this is a personal finance blog it makes sense that I would start detailing my goals for 2009 with my financial and work goals as they directly impact my financial situation. This past year I wasn’t making very much money and as a result I have been struggling to pay all of my bills. With my new job I am back up to what I was making when I first started this blog. The good thing is that I will now be able to pay all my debts regularly again and start saving a bit of money. Almost 2 years of making considerably less money can teach you a lot about yourself and your spending habits.
Financial goals for 2009
I have tried to keep my financial goals fairly simple this year mostly because last year was so much of a roller coaster coming up with some extremely large daunting goals might have more of a detrimental effect than anything else. Here are my goals for this year:
- Keep a weekly/monthly Budget
- Pay all my bills on time
- Save $400 a month in a savings account
- Pay down my debt by 10%
Keep a weekly/monthly Budget
I started budgeting on a weekly basis this past year and it worked out very well for me so I am going to keep this up and continue to plan on a monthly basis. I have been keeping pretty accurate records of where I have spent my money and I want to continue this as part of my budgeting. This should allow me to keep my spending on budget rather than trying to come up with some grand reduction.
Pay all my bills on time
The point about paying my bills on time is mostly a no brainer but its one I missed more than once last year so the goals this year will be to ensure everything is paid on time. With more money coming in I should be able to accomplish this one fairly easily but over the course of a whole year I still think it’s a valid goal.
Save $400 a month in a savings account
The $400 per month savings again isn’t huge but considering I didn’t have any last year I believe that this is a step in the right direction. The overall goal for my savings is to start an emergency fund. At the rate of $400 a month I’ll have almost $5,000 by the end of the year which would be a nice little emergency fund.
Pay down my debt by 10%
Although paying down my debt by only 10% might not seem like a big deal but last year I didn’t decrease it at all and the 10% amounts to about $3,500 not including house debt. I believe that this is a good starting point and I think I might be able to surpass this but again I would rather start out conservative and build on my success.
I could try setting very aggressive goals this year but I find that for myself if I am too ambitious then its harder to accomplish the goals. Can I reduce my debt by more than 10%? Of course I can and I will aim to but my goal will be 10% because I have a lot of unknowns and with a small baby and a house that will need some work I don’t want to set myself up for failure. Each of my goals comes with a personal aim that I would like to achieve but if I were to set these as goals I might find myself back in the situation where I am trying to do too much at once. If I find that I’ve set my goals too low then I’ll adjust them up.
This entry is filed under Budgeting and Planning, Commentary, Financial Situation.
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